I saw Kathleen Edwards open up for Richard Buckner at Iota back when I first moved to DC. She made a joke about the D.C. sniper, which was obviously a big deal back then. She asked if anyone knew how her favorite hockey player (man, I miss hockey) was doing. "He got shot by the sniper!" someone yelled. Good times. She did an acoustic version of AC/DC's "Money Talks" to end her set. You can get that on some Canadian download site, which just by that description sounds untrustworthy. So I thought she was good, but kind of forgot. Then her album Failer was written up all over the place. My friend burned me a copy and I forgot about that for a while. But a few months went by and I threw it on one day and it just caught fire with me. Kind of alt-country, adult-alternative, VH1-slick; but still great at the heart of it. "12 Bellevue" starts off with this guitar growl that I think is required to be on every alt-country album; it's filed under "dark, but not scary". But then all of a sudden horns and banjo come out and it's just an amazing song.

Anyway, long way to a short point: she's got a new album, Back to Me, coming out on March 1, and will be on Letterman the next day. Good times.